More dishonesty from Jeremy Sear

Once again, lefty blogger Jeremy Sear is guilty of the very thing he is supposed to be opposed to on his Pure Poison blog – intellectual dishonesty. Here is his interpretation of Tony Abbott’s column on getting more unemployed people into work:

The problem with the world these days is that poor people won’t come and restump my house for a fiver. Nor will they pick my fruit for 10c a basket. I have to pay working class people actual wages to do these things.

That’s why I’m voting for Tony Abbott.

In fact, at no stage did Abbott suggest that anyone should work for a pittance the article Jeremy links to makes only two mentions of the word “wage”, one of which is this:

Why should any reasonably fit person be on unemployment benefits in Karratha, for instance, when employers can’t find cleaners to work even at well-above-award wages?

Abbott wants people to work for above-award wages, rather than sit on passive welfare. Yet Jeremy’s intellectually dishonest interpretation is the exact opposite – that the unemployed should work for “fivers”.

We all support Jeremy’s struggle for intellectual honesty. But it’s time he practicsed what he preached.

Fun By the seaside, Sunshine Coast style

fun by the sea

The other day our regular commentator here Craigy made a comment about the Sunshine coast and the way that it is developing.

“… It works better that way. Much better than what we presently have.”

When? How?

Ray, the Sunshine Coast has been in trouble since well before Qld’s current problems.

The Greens support sustainable environmental tourism over building more high rise tourist traps. If the Sunshine Coast goes the way of the Gold Coast, as it is now, it will just become a large ghetto (as parts of it have already).

As the hotels get older, and there isn’t enough money to keep up appearances, the over developments become shabby and people stop coming, which is how it is going as we speak. The developments destroy the natural beauty that attracted people in the first place.

Places that embrace sustainable tourism, that respects the environment, are being recognised world wide as the way to go for the long term benefits of full time employment and economic sustainability.

Queensland has always been the state for a fast buck and many places are suffering as a result. With small hotels going bust, large hotels and resorts empty and thousands of floodplain building sites un-sold, things are grim for regular workers on the Sunshine Coast.

But hey, let’s just keep voting for conservative Christians and keep ringing out every last bit of gravy for the wealthy few, while the coast is buggered by over development, it worked on the Gold Coast, didn’t it?

Craigy

To my mind where he goes wrong is that he sees the Sunshine coast only in terms of tourism when the reality is that the vast majority of people who are there at any one time are not in fact tourists at all they live there all year round. and it is these people who are driving the style and nature of the the urban  development in that part of Queensland. So I will argue that the tendency to high rise building is more about people wanting to live near the beach than it is about people wanting to holiday at the beach.  Once you take in that salient fact the notion of “environmental tourism” can be seen as a nonsense when to comes to the Sunshine Coast. It was a nonsense even when I was a young chap and we would go to the those beaches on  day trips and its a nonsense now .

As Ray suggests the Greens have no idea at all about business, especially tourism, because if they are honest they would just come out and say that their belief in AGW means that no one should  fly or drive to a holiday away from home as it just adds too much to GHG emissions. They may talk about “eco-tourism” but by its very nature this has to be a restricted elitist activity  that only allows very small number of people to access those “pristine places” lest they be sullied by “unclean” humans. So for a business to be based upon this sort of tourism it has to be able to charge a very high price per visitor to cover costs and make a profit.

I am by no stretch of the imagination that keen on  urban landscapes even when they are by the seaside and the Sunshine Coast does not do much for me , However like Craigy I have family that live there and over the years I have probably  spent much more time there than he has. Heck I even lived there for some months when my daughter was first born ( in a flat owned by my Mother in law that  was only a 100m from the beach ) so I’ve  got a pretty good “feel” for the place. While I don’t think that it will ever be as sleazy as the Gold Coast it is catching up fast in terms of urban density and that means that those who do decide to holiday there are not going to be the mung-bean travellers who want to pretend that they are visiting some fantasy paradise (at grossly inflated prices) they are people from the urban heartlands of the south who want to enjoy all of the comforts that they are used to (hot and cold running Lattes, booze and sex) in a different setting. Strangely enough most of the international tourists want this sort of experience  as well so that is precisely what the business there offer.

Its the way that the world works.

Cheers Comrades

The Land of Painted Caves interview with Jean Auel

click for link

My beloved wife and I both loved this series of books and it will be a mixture of both joy and sadness to read the final volume of this epic saga. Anyway for those of you out there who also enjoyed the books please click on the image above for an interesting interview with Jean Auel about how she researched and wrote this book.

Cheers Comrades

Rascally ranga will make Green supporters see red

click for source

I am certainly not a fan of this rather stupid and inarticulate woman. She annoys the hell out of me with her simplistic arguments and her overblown ego but one thing that I am pleased about and that is if she wins a seat in the NSW upper house it will be at the expense of the Greens. Frankly I think that having Pauline Hanson in the upper house is preferable to the far left Greens anywhere near that  seat in the NSW upper house.

The Latte sippers are going to need emergency dental care from all of that collective gnashing of teeth is bound to begin today as they fall over themselves to explain why this is a terrible result for NSW and Australia.

Cheers Comrades

The temporary insanity defence: overused???

Freeman does not deny he threw his daughter to her death, but his lawyers have argued he is not guilty by reason of mental impairment. (AAP: Julian Smith) click for source

Am I alone here in thinking that the defence of “mental impairment” is getting a little too generous these days? If someone who has a severe illness like schizophrenia, or Bipolar disorder commits a crime then no one seriously doubts that their culpability is diminished by their disease, but in this sort of case where, he is claiming a temporary impairment,   isn’t it a really bad idea to allow a man who threw an innocent child of a bridge a way to escape the consequences of his despicable crime?

Lets hope that the jury does reach a verdict and that this truly evil man gets to spend the rest of his natural life behind bars where he belongs, because I can think of no crime that is more deserving of the most severe penalty than this one and no better reason to review the parameters of the “insanity ” defence in murder trials.

Cheers Comrades

Whatever happened to Kerrimy's Australian Family Lobby?

Is the "Australian Family Lobby" actually dead now?

I know that the AFL  Footy season is pending but this post is about that other AFL, a  creature invented by our learned friend and this missive  was inspired when I received this email.

Hi Iain,

it seems that the AFL was a bit of a flash in the pan.

I subscribe to their mailing list and there has been no correspondence for a couple of weeks.

Following the Broadmeadows By Election where they published a how to vote guide they gushed about how they would be scrutinising all the candidates in the NSW state election on their ‘family friendly ‘ credentials.

Well today is Election Day and not a peep.

cheers

(an AFL member*)

You would have to think from this email that my suggestion that Mr Sear’s  creature would be short-lived  is  totally correct, like a shark, once a lobby group stops swimming it probably means that it is dead.

Cheers Comrades

*name withheld by request

Sunday songs

Just in case some of my readers don’t want to think about politics this morning  why don’t we consider what a debt of gratitude contemporary popular  music owes to gospel music?

Not so much for the lryical content but the way that a song is sold and the way that it conveys its emotion.

Cheers Comrades

Bloodbath for Labor in NSW

being gutsy is not enough when the product you are trying to sell is as toxic as NSW Labor has become

New NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell celebrates his win

BARRY O’Farrell has become the 42nd premier of NSW in the biggest landslide seen in modern Australian political history.

Nationals beat sitting independents in three seats – Dubbo, Port Macquarie and Tamworth – and were likely to take Monaro from Labor’s Steve Whan and, in an extraordinary result, Bathurst, with a swing of 37 per cent.

Kristina Keneally stepped down as leader after conceding defeat to the Coalition in an electoral rout which ends 16 years of Labor government and may leave the ALP with just 20 seats, down from 50.

With a 17 per cent swing and a surge in its primary vote even beyond its expectations, the Coalition is set to win about 70 lower house seats, Labor 20 and independents the remaining three.

That sort of majority will carry the Coalition, which has governed in NSW for only seven of the past 35 years, through to the 2019 election at least.

The Nationals had a highly successful night, and are expected to pick up five seats for a total of 18.

This morning is a the beginning of a truly great day for Australia in general and NSW in particular, but what delights me even more is the way that this is going to make Joolia’s row even harder to hoe because this now means that she has no hospital agreement and even less support for her ill conceived and climatically   pointless carbon tax.

Mucho Cheers indeed Comrades !

And NO Greens won a seat either!!!

Labor moving out today, la la laaaa

click for source

It is not going to be a good day for the Labor party today and I must confess to a certain amount of Schadenfreude at the expected result which will see the government change  in our premier state.

The first  question for today is just how low will they go ?

The second is will Kristina loose her own seat and be saved from the embarrassment of a resignation and incurring the cost of a by-election?

Finally I wonder what sort of “after the count” party the ALP is planning and  will it be stocked with hard liquor to drown their very great sorrows at the expected magnitude of their long awaited political rout?

Cheers indeed Comrades

Dance now!

No effect from our emission reductions for nearly 1000 years according to Tim Flannery

click for MTR audio

I was rather bemused by the rant from Jonathan Holmes on the ABC’s media watch where he was basically whining about the number of sceptics  who are the broadcasters on commercial talk radio and the way that they don’t seem to have that many AGW true believers on their programs as guests. Well hats off to Steve Price and Andrew Bolt  for inviting Tim Flannery to speak on their show this morning.

Sadly though Tim did not do so well, even though he did reluctantly  to admit that all of the pain of this government’s attempts to reduce our emissions will not make any difference for nearly a thousand years (if at all) which sort of makes all of the AGW mitigation arguments rather moot… Unless you happen to be on the gravy train like our Tim here

Cheers Comrades

An unreasonable requirement for accuracy

Now its well known that I don’t rate speed cameras as a road safety measure, especially when they are concealed and improperly signed. But this report saying that the “tolerance” for instrument error is to be virtually abolished in NSW strikes me as being manifestly unjust because it has an unreasonable demand that drivers are able to tell their speed far more accurately than the instrument in their car is capable of doing it.

A leaked report from the budget committee of cabinet, dated December 9 last year, says the 3km/h tolerance will be removed. It says it will axe the ”internal and undisclosed tolerance as applied by the State Debt Recovery Office to digitally captured infringements as notified by the RTA”.

One senior Sydney policeman said the revised margin of error was so small that a new set of tyres or the width of a speedometer needle could land motorists on the wrong side of the law.

A spokeswoman for the RTA refused to confirm the tolerance and said it was a matter for the State Debt Recovery Office. A spokesman for the Treasurer said the office enforced policies set by the RTA and the transport department.

While NSW has always fiercely guarded its tolerance, the Victorian government revealed in 2007 that its tolerance level was 2km/h for fixed speed cameras and 3km/h for mobile speed cameras, plus a discretionary tolerance.

Australian design rules allow for a 10 per cent tolerance either way on car speedometers above speeds of 40km/h but the onus remains on the driver to stick to the speed limit.

As that senior Policemen suggests just having worn (but still legal) tyres could mean that your speedo may indicate a measured speed outside the tolerance that will result in  the issue of an infringement notice and this is wrong in principle because no one should be expected to be more accurate in their judgement of their car’s speed than the instrumentation in the car can provide for. Surely this is an instance where this ruling could be challenged in the courts?

Something for the incoming premier  Barry O Farrell to fix I think …

Cheers Comrades

Being Bob's Biatch….

for a contrary view click this image

In colloquial terms a person is someone’s bitch when they are subservient to their will, this term of derision is freely used when describing individuals of both genders and while it may seem rather crude, when it comes to describing the relationship between Gillard and Brown on the environmental issue de jour. There is some merit in the terminology.

Of more concern to me is the lack of an apostrophe to designate the possessive case in the word “Browns”. It is usually the left who make such basic orthographic errors and I am deeply disturbed that one of my fellow conservative/sceptics has been remiss enough to have missed the most important punctuation marks from their placard…

To be honest I have been amazed at the rancour of the many minions of the left  over the pithy signs at this rally its not as if the minions of the left have never been lacking in good taste or due respect to the leaders of the nation when the coalition have been the subject of the people’s ire in public protests,  In my youth I vividly remember some lefty wag  writing (in metre high letters) on the wall of the Milton underpass. “DOES FLO GIVE JOH A (BLOW) JOB?” after Joh made her a senator to fill a casual vacancy that was certainly crude but it was also bitingly funny and how many times have the left  referred to Tony Abbott as the “the mad monk”? Look such things are horses for courses in our political dialogue and if one side can do it freely then so to can the other.

Some protesters did seem to be off message but what is new about that?

More from the rally

Protest sign Spell check in action?

We have a most robust  democracy that does not allow excessively  obsequious deference to our political leaders, that is one of the strengths of our egalitarian society and to my mind that makes Australia a better democracy than is evident in the USA where they revere their leaders in a way that is entirely alien to us. All I can say to the lefties who are getting upset about signs like the one at the top of this piece is, well, grow some and stop pretending that our democracy is not robust enough to tolerate a little justified derision of those we have in power (or of those who aspire to power), it helps to keep them grounded and free of hubris and that has to be a good thing.

Update just compare the following images and consider their tone and content  compared to those exhibited yesterday:

Cheers Comrades

A cure for the Queensland Blight? Can Do!!!!!

Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman overlooking the city hall yesterday after announcing his entry into state politics as a possible LNP leader. Picture: Liam Kidston Source: The Australian

click for source

As is often said “there are no politics like Queensland politics “and watchers of the game up here should never be surprised by something coming up that is not in the usual songbook and there is no doubt that the ructions in the LNP  are a new tune, even for Queensland.

Can he do it? Is my question for today and I will have to say that I hope that he can because the leadership of John Paul Langbrook has to say the least been rather underwhelming. In Newman we have a man who has a record as a competent administrator and who has a public persona that is both likeable and charismatic and if you get over the fact that he has yet to win a seat in the house he certainly knows how to work the media…

While some are suggesting that Anna Bligh may go early to try to make the most of he post flood bounce I tend to think that she will wait hoping to get traction with the unusual method of Campbell’s ascension and the admittedly unprecedented interim party arrangements in the LNP, in the hope that she can portray them as politically desperate.  Something that I think will fail as Bligh reverts to type as the flood silt dissipates.

Cheers Comrades

An Earnest Lefty

To Be hacked once , Mr. Sear, may be regarded as a misfortune. To be hacked twice looks like carelessness:

Unless of course there was no hacking at all and this is all just a ruse intended to garner some sympathy after a learned friend has been embarrassed by his own foolishness just as he was when he fronted up to the MTR switchboard under an assumed name “Jeff of Mulgrave “. He has form for not revealing who he is when commenting on the net. Astute readers may well notice that there is no direct and outright denial that the site in question is a Sear creation. Frankly I don’t believe that anyone would go to all of the trouble of Hacking someone’s blog just to insert a link to a rather dull parody site so maybe the edits to our learned friend’s blog were made by one of his cats who had watched him log in to WordPress and remembered his password…

Update

Having read this piece at Our learned  friend responds with a comment to his own post:

Update II

Our leaned friend now admits that he was not hacked at all but instead he made a mistake in typing in the URL at his own blogroll and someone has taken advantage of that error to create a piss-take blog that he linked to:

Actually, my “benefit of the doubt” good will seems to have been a little generous.

If you check the Wayback Machine, you’ll see that the link Jeremy claims was just recently changed by an evil stalky rightwing hacker has actually always linked to http://blairboltwatchproject.wordpress.com/ (which until recently was an unclaimed non-existent blog, a fact someone obviously quite legitimately took advantage of just recently). It’s only recently been changed to link to http://blairboltwatch.wordpress.com/.

So I’m calling bullshit on Jeremy and his “poor me I’ve been hacked by evil rightwing extremist stalkers” claim.

I STILL have the utmost sympathy for anyone, Left or Right, whose blog really IS hacked, as that is just one of those things that needs blanket condemnation from everyone in the Blogosphere.

But I think crying “HACKED!!” when you haven’t been, whether it’s to get fake sympathy or cover up for one of your own mistakes or whatever, is a pretty shabby thing to do too. What a pathetic little creep. He’ll have only himself to blame if people aren’t especially eager to empathise with him next time he cries wolf.

Spot the dog via JF Beck

As Gig Diary suggests in the comemnts its not a  good look for a barrister to announce to the world that his electronic security is bad enough that he can be hacked twice and I will suggest that is just as bad or worse for him to claim hat he has been hacked when he hasn’t either.

You just never know Comrades

Cruising into Libya

As the cruise missiles are taking out the air defences and military hardware belonging to the Gadaffi regime I can’t help wondering just where this will lead because if there is one thing you learn from studying history and that is the simple fact that wars never turn out precisely as you expect they will when you are deep inside the bunker moving little icons  about on the table.

click for source

Of course It will be interesting to see just how true to the cause all of those minions of the left who are doing a little victory dance about this action at present will be because  experience suggests that as soon as we start to see the inevitable  images of children blown to bits collateral damage I suspect that many will revert to type and blame the USA and the west in general. I hope I’m wrong about that and that this action quickly ends the regime’s reign of terror.

This post will be updated as the situation unfolds so please include worthwhile links and commentary in the comments

Cheers Comrades